Otti Approves N100m Business Support For Poly Graduates

A total of 100 graduating students of Ogbonnaya Onu Polytechnic, Aba, have been offered N1 million each to support their business ideas.

Abia State governor, Dr Alex Otti, disclosed this at the 22nd convocation of the polytechnic, where he also approved a 6-month field training for 200 of the students.

The governor urged those who made distinctions in their final results and are interested in the offer to submit their business plans to his office for evaluation and selection.

Otti, who titled his address “Education as a Responsibility,” recalled how he made a similar offer at the 2021/22, 2022/23 and 2023/24 combined convocation last year.

His words, “Let me congratulate the beneficiaries and inform them that we shall be monitoring their progress; those who do well shall get more support from us,”

“The days of letting our best and brightest brains wander off after graduation and struggling in far-off corners of the world without support are gone.

“The message to students in all our tertiary schools is clear: do your best and we shall offer you further material leverage to find genuine success right here in Abia,” he said.

Presenting a posthumous award by the polytechnic to the first civilian governor of the state to his wife, Dr Chinyere Onu, he said it was the ingenuity of the late Dr Ogbonnaya Onu that led to the setting up of the polytechnic.

In his address, the chairman of the Governing Council of the polytechnic, Stanley Egege, attributed the ongoing transformation in the polytechnic to the governor’s education agenda.

Earlier, the rector of the polytechnic, Dr Christopher Okoro thanked Otti “for the massive funding” of the ongoing infrastructure projects at its Osisioma Campus.

He said in the past 14 years, the polytechnic had had three convocations, of which two took place during the “22-month-old administration with the all-round support of the education-loving governor.

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